Vietnam's Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN

Foreword

Foreword James Webb I have worked for many years to help bring reconciliation both inside Vietnam and between Vietnam and the United States. In this process I have come to know and respect many people inside the Vietnamese government. I have become friends with people who served in the Army against which I fought. I have strengthened and nurtured my respect for those Vietnamese who fought alongside the Americans. And I have, on more than a few occasions, met Vietnamese who switched their loyalties as the war began to go badly for the South Vietnamese. In human terms, few of us have the standing to condemn anyone who decided to choose a different side in a brutal, seemingly never-ending war. But loyalty to one’s comrades is the glue that binds all military service. It is a far stronger cohesive factor than the political reasons that compel a nation to fight. It transcends even the time a nation is at war, because wars have consequences for those who fight them that carry over, not only into the rest of their lives but to the generations that follow. One cannot begin to comprehend the tales of Harry Hue Tran, a great soldier who paid dearly for his loyalty but who must answer in his honor to no one, and of Pham Van Dinh, whose journey was less painful but in the end more complicated, without understanding this distinction. And to understand that distinction, it is important to look not at the Vietnam that is emerging year by year into the world community but at the Vietnam that initially grew out of the dark days of the war itself. I first returned to Vietnam in March 1991, visiting Hanoi and Saigon , which had been renamed Ho Chi Minh City following the communist victory in April 1975. Hanoi was dirt-poor, its streets dark at xiii night from lack of electric power and with hardly a motor vehicle on the roads other than the aging Russian staff cars used by government officials. Saigon was a step upward but was still shaking like a cowed dog from the impact of the communist takeover. Everywhere in Saigon , private conversations inevitably began with a glance outward and the comparative phrase “before 1975,” as if life could be divided just as completely by that demarcation as Christians seek to divide it with the phrases “b.c.” and “a.d.” In truth, the country was just beginning to climb out of its status as a hard-core Stalinist state. A “bamboo curtain” had been lowered following the communist victory in 1975, preventing the outside world from scrutinizing the brutal retaliatory processes through which the country had been unified. Rebuffing most of the outside world, the Hanoi government had closely aligned itself with the Soviet Union, which until its own downfall had heavily subsidized the Vietnamese economy and trained its government officials in outmoded socialist economic practices. Media visits were rare, and those that were allowed were tightly monitored by the government. Tourist visas were also few. The secret police, controlled by the powerful Ministry of the Interior, were everywhere. It was not uncommon for naïve and unknowing Western visitors to be followed by government agents on the streets and for their conversations to be monitored while they were in their hotel rooms. Unlike many Americans who were allowed into Vietnam at that time, I had strong cultural referents through which I could evaluate the human dramas that unveiled themselves before my eyes as I made my way along the streets of Saigon. I had spent my entire adult life immersed in the study of East Asian cultures and had spent time in the region as a journalist. During the war, I had fought as an infantry Marine on some of Vietnam’s bloodiest battlefields. And, most important , after the war’s tragic end, I had spent countless hours assisting Vietnamese refugees who had made their way, often at great cost, to the United States. Through that process I had gained invaluable insights into the intricacies of Vietnam’s culture, the perspectives of the Vietnamese regarding the stakes involved in the war, and the internecine battles among Vietnamese on both sides that had rarely made it into American debates about the reasons we were there or why we did not prevail. This first return to a country that I have always deeply loved literxiv Foreword [3.144.96.159] Project MUSE (2024...